Abstract: File-based videorecordings, videocassettes, optical discs, and transcripts, as well as brochures and legal and financial records
relating to political conditions and human rights violations in Iraq under the Ba'th party regime. Includes digitized video
testimony of survivors.

Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives

Languages:
Arabic,
Kurdish,
English

Administrative Information

Access

The collection is open for research. While boxes 2-4 are closed, digital use copies of their contents are available. Boxes
5-7 closed until 2018 October 1. Use copies of most videorecordings in this collection are available for immediate access.

Publication Rights

Quotations from this collection may be protected by copyright law. The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, does not hold
copyright to any of the materials in the collection; it is the researcher's responsibility, when necessary, to obtain copyright
permission. The Hoover Institution is not responsible for any misuse by researchers of quotations obtained from this collection.

Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 2009. An increment of videocassettes and optical discs was received
in 2012, and an increment of administrative records was received in 2013.

Accruals

Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find
the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/ . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the catalog is larger than the number of boxes
listed in this finding aid.

The Mu'assasat al-dhākirah al-'Irāqīyah (Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF)) is a private nonprofit organization for documentation
of Iraqi history under the Ba'th party regime. It was founded by Kanan Makiya in 1992 as the Iraq Research and Documentation
Project (IRDP) at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Makiya had just returned from a November 1991 trip
to northern Iraq, where he viewed the archive of documents of the Hiẓb al-Ba'th al-'Arabଢ଼ al-Ishtirīkଢ଼ (Ba'th Arab Socialist
Party of Iraq) that had been seized by Iraqi rebels. Makiya was accompanied by a BBC filmmaker who filmed his investigation
of the Iraqi government's campaign of ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Kurds (the Anfal). The film,
The Road to Hell, aired in January 1992 on BBC and then on PBS as a
Frontline documentary under the title "Saddam's Killing Fields." Now president of the Iraq Memory Foundation, Makiya is the Sylvia
Hassenfeld Professor of Modern Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He has written many books, including
Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (1989).

In 1993 the IRDP developed a plan to preserve the Ba'thist documents Makiya had examined in Iraq. Over the next ten years
the IRDP received and processed documents and transcribed Iraqi refugee interviews.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the IRDP relocated to Baghdad, where it registered as a Jam'iyah (society)
in Iraq under the name Iraq Memory Foundation. It expanded its mission to include documenting all facets of the Iraqi experience
under the regime of Saddam Hussein from 1968 to 2003. Also in 2003, the IMF acquired the Ba'th Regional Command collection
from the basement of the Ba'th party headquarters in Baghdad.

The IMF began its Oral History on Film Project, which records the testimonies of witnesses to Ba'th regime repression, in
2003. Documentary filmmaker Mustafa Al-Kadhimiy, who formerly headed the Department of Programs and Planning at al-Iraqiyya
television, led the project. In 2005, al-Iraqiyya began broadcasting ten-minute excerpts from the testimonies during prime
time and they quickly became one of Iraq's top-rated TV programs. The IMF went on to produce several seasons of a series called
Legacy of Evil for Iraqi television. This weekly program consists of interviews with witnesses, Saddam-era video footage, and presentations
of documents created by the regime. In total, the IMF has more than 1700 hours of footage, including videos created by the
Ba'th regime (now allocated to the Hiẓb al-Ba'th al-'Arabī al-Ishtirākī in Iraq records at Hoover), oral histories, the
Legacy of Evil archive, and Saddam Hussein trial videorecordings. The IMF claims the copyrights on all the oral history videos it produces
(IMF Prospectus 2008, page 26, box 1).

On September 21, 2005, IMF directors Kanan Makiya and Hassan Mneimneh testified before the human rights caucus of the U.S.
Congress on the importance of the work of the IMF. The IMF also provided documents for use in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Scope and Content of Collection

This collection consists of materials created by the Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF) since its inception in 1992. Ba'th Party
records collected by the IMF comprise a separate collection, the Hiẓb al-Ba'th al-'Arabī al-Ishtirākī in Iraq records.

The collection is organized in five series, most of which were defined and named by the Iraq Memory Foundation: Printed matter,
Videocassettes and optical discs, Video Documents Created by the Iraq Memory Foundation, Video Documents from Post 2003, and
Administrative records.

All materials except the printed matter and administrative records are described in the "Video Documents" section of the searchable
database designed and populated by the Iraq Memory Foundation. This database was acquired with the collection and is available
at the Hoover Institution.